"Nickel and Dimed"

While applying for various jobs in Minneapolis, Ehrenreich is required to take drug tests before being hired. She is worried about passing them and is badly in need of a job, so she looks for solutions to her problem on the Web. During her search, she finds many ingestible products that all promise to rid the body of elements that may show up on a drug test. One site even offers a vial of good urine to use in place of one’s own for a drug test. The urine also conveniently comes with a battery-heater to create a realistic body temperature, which is key for a drug test. These drug tests are seen as unnecessary and useless by Ehrenreich, because she sees the many ways around them that people likely use every day for these screening tests. She doesn’t even think some companies use or care about the results as much as they make it seem, which makes the tests even more useless and wasteful of money.
Requiring employees to take drug tests isn’t very effective, because drug-using applicants often foresee this obstacle and can easily overcome it by using the method Ehrenreich did or by simply staying drug free before interviewing for a job. A person dependent on drugs isn’t going to stop just to be hired and to get a job. If they pass the test and are hired, it is likely that they will continue to use drugs while they are employed, causing problems that the company was trying to avoid in the first place. Drug testing is a waste of company money because it isn’t very effective in preventing or even monitoring drug-use among potential or current employees.
Companies may even be getting less productive workers by giving a drug test to all of their employees upon hiring them, because the employees may feel that the company doesn’t see them as trustworthy or respectable, and negative feelings may develop between employer and employee. The employee probably won’t do his best work or put in an extra effort for a company that he sees as condescending towards its workers.
If I were required to take a drug test before I was hired by a company I would immediately feel that I wasn’t trusted by the company. Even though I know an employer only does it as a precaution, I would want my word to be enough proof for them that I’m not using drugs. Also, I would want my actual interview to have more influence on whether or not I was hired than the results of a drug test.
I don’t feel that drug tests are necessary to find if an employee will be responsible and productive on the job. Let a person do what they want on their own time, and if their leisure activities affect their job performance, let them pay the consequences then.